GTX 970 (my) Optimal settings 1080p

[EsotericEgo]

Firstly any of you with this card will know that the optimal settings recommended by Nvidia are a joke, you hover around 60FPS with crazy drops and increases which drive you insane.

Since release I've been playing with the settings quite often to find the perfect balance between FPS and graphical quality, while this wont be a surprise to most of you the biggest killers are shadows, grass, anti-aliasing and advanced distance scaling, so with this in mind I keep everything in the advanced settings to off and sliders to zero (default basically), the graphics settings below give me an absolute solid 60FPS (with V-Sync) with the best graphical quality I believe possible, the only time I saw it dip below 60FPS was when I caused a massive traffic jam of cars on the freeway and went crazy with the explosives, even then the lowest drop was 54FPS which quickly shot back up to 60FPS.

FXAA - ON
MSAA - OFF
Population Density - MAX
Population Variety -MAX
Distance Scaling - MAX
Texture Quality - Very High
Shader Quality - Very High
Shadow Quality - High
Reflection Quality - Ultra
Reflection MSAA - X8
Water Quality - Very High
Particles Quality - Very high
Grass Quality - High
Soft Shadows - Soft
Post FX - Ultra
Motion Blur - (Up to you)
In-Game Depth Of Field - ON
Antistropic Filtering - X16
Ambient Occlusion - High
Tessellation - Very high

Now lastly my set-up.
I5 4690
16GB RAM
MSI GTX 970 4GB Graphics Card
1TB SATA HD 7200 RPM

If you would care to try these out then let me know how you get on, and if you have tried with settings slightly higher and kept a solid 60FPS.

EDIT: I unparked my CPU cores quite some time ago, but I can't be sure if that is helping with performance or not.

EDIT 2: Now added benchmark video below, please note there is a slight hit to FPS due to the recording software, but with that said it is a stable 60 for 99% of the benchmark.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PJRW31g-ncM&feature=youtu.be

Edit 3: Now added benchmark video without V-Sync, note that it doesn't drop below 60fps until the explosion right at the end but then it quickly shoots back up again, also note that the video is around 10 FPS less than when I ran the benchmark without recording.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LBcCMSJHUw&feature=youtu.be

[Madeleine McCann]

i have the same gpu with i7 and 16gm ram. still drops like ♥♥♥♥. i didnt spend like 300 pounds for this ♥♥♥♥

[effmoo =☺_☺= 7]

i have the same setup but a ssd instead
do you do these settings in game and if so what do you have the game in geforce experience set to

[EsotericEgo]

Originally posted by effmoo:

i have the same setup but a ssd instead
do you do these settings in game and if so what do you have the game in geforce experience set to

The above settings are what I use in game, I don't use geforce experience settings as they switch all the advanced settings on which just cripples FPS.

[EsotericEgo]

Originally posted by AsianBoy:

i have the same gpu with i7 and 16gm ram. still drops like ♥♥♥♥. i didnt spend like 300 pounds for this ♥♥♥♥

Sorry to hear that, I wonder what could be causing the FPS difference as yours is the slightly better system.

[effmoo =☺_☺= 7]

Originally posted by Ciderfects:

Originally posted by effmoo:

i have the same setup but a ssd instead
do you do these settings in game and if so what do you have the game in geforce experience set to

The above settings are what I use in game, I don't use geforce experience settings as they switch all the advanced settings on which just cripples FPS.

ok thanks i will un optimize it in geforce and try your settings in game , i only got the card on sunday

[effmoo =☺_☺= 7]

Originally posted by Ciderfects:

Originally posted by AsianBoy:

i have the same gpu with i7 and 16gm ram. still drops like ♥♥♥♥. i didnt spend like 300 pounds for this ♥♥♥♥

Sorry to hear that, I wonder what could be causing the FPS difference as yours is the slightly better system.

the guy in the pc shop i go in reckons at the time i got my i5 it was the better option to an i7 for gaming

[EsotericEgo]

Originally posted by effmoo:

Originally posted by Ciderfects:

The above settings are what I use in game, I don't use geforce experience settings as they switch all the advanced settings on which just cripples FPS.

ok thanks i will un optimize it in geforce and try your settings in game , i only got the card on sunday

Cool, let me know how it goes for you.

[EsotericEgo]

Originally posted by effmoo:

Originally posted by Ciderfects:

Sorry to hear that, I wonder what could be causing the FPS difference as yours is the slightly better system.

the guy in the pc shop i go in reckons at the time i got my i5 it was the better option to an i7 for gaming

He's right but only from a cost perspective, the I7 is still slightly better but at a much higher price.

[effmoo =☺_☺= 7]

Originally posted by Ciderfects:

Originally posted by effmoo:

the guy in the pc shop i go in reckons at the time i got my i5 it was the better option to an i7 for gaming

He's right but only from a cost perspective, the I7 is still slightly better but at a much higher price.

no i had the money for the i7 but he said the extras in it wont be used in games - if i was drawing / cad the i7 is better

[Heisenberg]

I own a gtx 970 too. I used to have frame drops but now they gone and dont ask me what I did because I dont know. I tried everything to stop the frame drops and had no success. So I gave up. But now out of nowhere frame drops are gone. I"ll post later my settings.

[LoonyToons]

Post a benchmark video of this so called solid 60fps with those settings in game @ 1080 because I can tell you that you are not getting that with those settings on that card with that cpu.

Unless Rockstar have done a major change in the last patch to increase performance by a good % I call you out as a plain liar.

Give me a few minutes to post something I know will prove how wrong you are.

[EsotericEgo]

Originally posted by Ghost:

Post a benchmark video of this so called solid 60fps with those settings in game @ 1080 because I can tell you that you are not getting that with those settings on that card with that cpu.

Unless Rockstar have done a major change in the last patch to increase performance by a good % I call you out as a plain liar.

Give me a few minutes to post something I know will prove how wrong you are.

I don't mind you asking for a video but is there any need to be so offensive?

EDIT: I have run the benchmark and the FPS is 60 99% of the time, the only variation is when the tanker explodes at the end, but I did explain in my OP that large explosions did cause a momentary dip.

[effmoo =☺_☺= 7]

how do you find what fps you get in game

[effmoo =☺_☺= 7]

ciderfects yea i got it running smoother just had a really good drive on bike and car and then ran a benchmark test so i'll keep it like this for now thanks

[Magicktech]

You should use Nvidia DSR 1440p @ 15-20% smoothness and Nvidia FXAA in the control panel... instead of just Rockstar's in-game FXAA and 1080p. The game will look way better. I also don't see why you can't bump your grass to very high as it only gets a drop to 53 FPS at worst. Not sure if High setting has any FPS drop for you in heavy grass areas, but very high looks a lot nicer since the grass has shadows and AO. Interestingly since yesterday's Nvidia driver update I can now use shadows on very high and Nvidia PCSS soft shadows. I even put the extended shadow distance all the way up in advanced graphics and have not seen any performance drop yet.

EDIT: Also if you haven't not done so already, use MSI Afterburner and overclock the 970. I have the same one as you and this will give you like a 5+ FPS boost...

Power Limit %: +110
Core Clock: +160
Memory Clock: +430

You don't even have to touch the voltage with those settings. You'll run 5c degrees hotter though.